Service Point - Results for 2009 (and, by extrapolation, for Q4 2009)

I just noticed, this morning, that Service Point, I guess very recently, issued a press release covering its 2009 full-year sales and earnings.....

You can find that press release at this web address:

http://www.servicepoint.net/es/press/docs/PR-SPS%20Results2009.pdf

The lack of transparency in Spain-based, public-company-reporting continues to be very interesting.

SP’s press release does not mention anything specifically about Q4 2009 Sales (or Q4 2009 vs. Q4 2008 Sales), but, when you do the math to extrapolate what their Q4 2009 Sales were, you can see that Q4 2009 sales came in at 12.8% less than Q4 2008 Sales.

Considering the fact that Q3 2009 Sales came in at 18.3% less than Q3 2008 Sales, SP’s sales performance for Q4, comparatively speaking (Q4 vs. Q3) was not all that bad, trend-wise.

Q3 2009 Sales versus Q3 2008 Sales – off 18.3%
Q4 2009 Sales versus Q4 2008 Sales – off “only” 12.8%

Does this mean that SP has seen the worst of the current recession?

For the “full-year” 2009, SP reported:
Sales of 216.5 million Euro
Normalized Profit of .6 million Euro

For the first 9 months of 2009, SP previously reported:
Sales of 162.1 million Euro
Normalized Profit of 1.6 million Euro

Comparing the two sets of numbers above, it looks to me like SP lost 1.0 million Euro in Q4 2009.

Let’s do an ARC vs. SP comparison:

ARC’s numbers:
Sales decline: 2009 vs. 2008 – Sales decline was 28.4%
ARC Full-year 2009 Sales- $501.5 million Dollars
ARC Full-year 2009 Net Profit - $22.4** million Dollars
Net Profit as a Percentage of Sales – 4.5%**
(** Does not take into account charges for Goodwill Impairment or write-down of intangible assets, but does, I think, include the one-time charge ARC took for the credit restructuring completed in the Fall.)

Service Point’s numbers:
Sales decline: 2009 vs. 2008 – Sales decline was 8.9%
SP Full-year 2009 Sales – 215.5 million Euro
SP Full-year 2009 Net Profit - .6* million Euro
Net Profit as a Percentage of Sales – 0.3%*
[* Does not take into account any charges SP may have taken in 2009 (or for 2009) for Goodwill Impairment.]